What's the Big Deal about Bacon?

It's nice to know a couple of people do here my segments on KCRW-FM 89.9's Good Food show, but the universal reaction this week was the same: why don't I like bacon?

In my latest review (which was really an old review of Buena Park's Athenian Burgers #3, home of OC's best breakfast burrito), I mentioned that I really don't care for bacon. It's true: since I was a child, I tended to eschew that type of pork. Part of it was cultural--my type of Mexi doen't eat much bacon; the Zacatecan idea of piggy bliss is chicharrones and carnitas, and we prefer beef, chicken, rabbit, and goat to pork. Whenever we did have an American-style breakfast, I always asked for ham over bacon, preferring the former's thick, earthy taste to the latter's crispy, burnt, plank of grease.

Seriously: what's the big deal about bacon? The years-long craze for bacon on everything, the hipster trend or cliches that bacon improves everything leaves me mystified. Bacon on chocolate is...okay. Bacon-infused vodka? Why? That local restaurant that boasts it makes hamburger patties with half-bacon, half-beef? Tried it--PASS. Bacon isn't horrible--it's really no big deal, so without glory I don't even care to continue this post.

Funniest thing about this? Some of you will rip into me for being so blase about bacon, as if it's the ultimate food sin. If I insulted prosciutto (which I love), maybe a couple would take issue. But bacon? Let's see what happens...

Gustavo Arellano is the editor of OC Weekly, author of the syndicated column "¡Ask a Mexican!", and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. He started at the paper with an angry, fake letter to the editor and went from there—only in Anacrime!